I am currently doing experiments involving Software Defined Radio and Radar systems. Since I am new in this field and currently try to refresh my physics/math skills, I encountered some problems along the way.
The imaginary setup of my experiment is the following: A radar transmitter is placed at one location. An RF receiver (SDR) is stationed at another location. The radar is sending while the only job of the RF receiver is to receive the transmitted signals of the radar. At the same time, the radar is rotating and a difference in measured signal strength should be observed everytime the radar antenna is not facing the RF receiver. My main concern is to measure the moments in time, the radar antenna is directly facing the RF receiver.
However, I am rather confused on how to measure signal strength. Since I don't have access to a real radar system, I tried to implement one via Software-Defined Radio. The signal is generated by sending pulsed waves and to simulate a rotation of the antenna the amplitude increases for each pulse. There is one pulse with the peak amplitude in the middle. Afterwards the amplitude for each peak is declining. I am not sure if this is even remotely correct.
My question is whether it is possible to measure the time the radar antenna is directly facing towards the RF receiver and whether there are methods that can help me there.